In the midst of life I woke to find myself living in an old house beside Brick Lane in the East End of London

Out Partying With The Bunny Girls Again

Several years ago, I attended a Bunny Girls Reunion at The Grapes in Limehouse hosted by ex-Bunny Barbara Haigh and to my amazement I was invited back this year as a guest of honour …

Old friends, Bunny Cherry & Bunny Odette

On Sunday afternoon, while the rest of London was tidying up leaves in the garden, taking tea, visiting the markets or enjoying a bracing autumn walk, I was at the Hippodrome Casino in Leicester Sq with Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven attending the Bunny Girls & Playboy Models Reunion.

The doorman gives you a deferential nod when you step from the milling tourist crowd over the threshold of the casino and the coat check woman bids you “Good afternoon!” as you pass through the passageway that leads into the vast gaming room. The proscenium and the elaborate plasterwork from the Edwardian theatre loom overhead, framing the auditorium that once hosted the “Talk of the Town,” where today excited gamblers throng around the roulette wheel and the baize tables where blackjack, craps and baccarat are played.

You ascend a winding staircase and acquire a glass of champagne, and you find yourself on another level and in another world. It is a poignant universe of nostalgia and recollection, where those who once based their public identities upon their youthful beauty gather to revisit and assess that experience, and rekindle the friendships and camaraderie forged a lifetime ago in the unlikely environment of the Playboy Club.

Presiding over the gathering of these evanescent spirits were the Oberon & Titania of this shadowy realm – Victor Lownes, the mythic lothario who opened the Playboy Club in Park Lane in 1966, now frail in his mid-eighties yet twinkling with genial humour, and his paramour, Marilyn Cole, the first full frontal Playboy centrefold, still sassy and commanding in physical presence.

In these more puritanical times, former Bunnies are aware of those who might judge them harshly yet they are unanimously unapologetic about their choice to become part of Playboy and their right to that choice. No-one voiced any regrets except one woman who confessed to me wistfully, “I wish I could go back and do it all over again.”

“Emmeline Pankhurst would have been proud of us!” asserted Marilyn with proud audacity, disarming me with her cultural reference while drawing raucous cheers from the crowd, “We were pioneers for equality – at the Playboy Club, the women all earned more than the men.”

A certain autumnal melancholy coloured the proceedings that afternoon, arising perhaps from a collective realisation of the transience of youth and physical beauty as commodified by Playboy. With unnecessary modesty, one woman confided to me that she was touched that anyone would be interested to take her portrait today and, as with other reunions, there were those who were absent never to return and quietly mourned by their fellows.

My enduring impression will be of astonishment at the vitality of these women. In spite of the changes that time has wrought and which are common to all humanity, they still have an abundance of spirit and charisma. Exhausted after a couple of hours chatting, I sat quietly in the corner to wonder at their stamina. Whatever life has dealt them, these women have not lost their star quality.

Regrettably, I do not think I could ever be a Bunny Girl because, alongside other obvious insufficiencies, I do not have the effervescence. When I confessed this weary realisation to Marilyn Cole at the end of Sunday’s long afternoon of mingling, she looked me in the eye and gave a surprising response. “That’s because you actually listen to what people say,” she informed me with a forgiving smile.

Marilyn Cole – “We were pioneers of equality!”

Bunny Marlon AKA Patricia Robson - “I was a cockney from Stepney and I went from there to the Bahamas!”

Bunny Monique AKA Mary Phillips -‘”I started as a Bunny at seventeen and was a croupier at eighteen. All the famous people were there and as a Bunny Girl you were a celebrity in your own right”

Bunny Kim AKA Therese Hyland – “I came from a boring office job and it opened my eyes”

Despite general public perception of the bunny girls as mere objects of titilation this article and the one on the recent reunion go a long way towards proving that there is a lot more to these women that just looks , good luck to them all .

I would have loved to attend but didn’t know about it. I was hire d by Cindy Bury in the Knightsbridge townhouse. I was still 17. Turning 18 I became a great croupier bunny. I was one of the very first bunnies after Dolly. I remember Marilyn Cole. Keith Hefner asked me to model for the magazine but I was too shy and tuned him down!!!!

A very nostalgic afternoon with all the ex-Playboy Bunnies and staff. We were all on great form – and I am still basking in the afterglow of all the warmth and camaraderie felt at this years’ re-union. It says below my photo – I was the only Bunny DJ. Correction here, Serena Williams, who went on to be the Playboy Public Relations Officer was the First Bunny DJ. That would have been in the sixties I presume, and I was a DJ in 1978/79

I went with some friends who were Chinese and loved to gamble and still remember how pleasant it was and fun! But I could quite believe people could lose thousands or more. I was in Monte Carlo and dated a croupier, who told me that a person could have a heart attack in front of gamblers and they would not care or notice!

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Unauthorized use or duplication of these words and pictures without written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Spitalfields Life with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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